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What the gently caress? Breakers are like what, $5-10 a pop (for the regular ones)?
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Jul 23, 2014 22:46
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PuTTY riot posted:What the gently caress? Breakers are like what, $5-10 a pop (for the regular ones)? My main breaker was ~$120 and the HACR was ~$80 I could've bought a new square D panel for about that price. https://www.google.com/search?q=zinsco+150+amp+breaker&tbm=shop CopperHound fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 22:53
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Mercury Ballistic posted:Serious question from the guy who likes to DIY, but has little training, and just a moderate amount of experience. Get rid of that poo poo. Post anything else you find that seems sketchy or you're not sure about it and we'll see what everyone says. Honestly - basically, if you have no idea what hot and neutral mean, you probably shouldn't be doing wiring. Or should have an electrician buddy watching what you are doing. stress/tension/shear - talk to a structural engineer or check the building code, like you suggested. Or both. There are some rules of thumb to go by, as well.
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Jul 23, 2014 23:13
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I did not mean to mislead folks. I know the difference between hot and neutral, but I meant that a lot of people don't. People who may still feel up to messing with that stuff. I feel fairly confident on basic home stuff, I have installed GFCIs, swapped out a bad breaker and other fairly simple stuff. I do know electricians and know when to call for professional help or advice. As for the sketchy power strip, I took it out the day I moved in. It was above the kitchen sink no less, although it was plugged into a GFCI which I suppose partially excuses its existence. The rest of the house has been fairly well taken care of, but at about 60 years old, it has its issues.
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Jul 24, 2014 01:14
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Mercury Ballistic posted:Serious question from the guy who likes to DIY, but has little training, and just a moderate amount of experience. I think a lot of things are common sense, and even more are easily figured out by someone who is even slightly mechanically inclined. Minimum code in a lot of systems in a lot of jurisdictions is just lovely. It doesn't take much knowledge of building to know that minimum code R-30 in the attic is not as good as spending an extra thousand bucks one time to get enough blown in to make an R50. Or that it's A-OK to carpet right up to an outside door by code, but you know if you actually use that door to come in and out of in the rain and snow it's going to get destroyed. If you're talking about stress/tension/shear you don't have a choice when building a house: you are not a engineer who can stamp plans. You build to the plans, period. If you want more than minimum code you tell the architect/engineer that when they are doing the plans for you and discuss the options with the professional you've engaged to make them. Hot, neutral, etc.....if you don't know these you shouldn't be touching electrical, full stop.
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Jul 24, 2014 03:01
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I will say that I have learned a hell of a lot just by reading the code, looking up terms I didn't know, and buying the occasional DIY book. And posting questions here (thanks again, Motronic!). While a lot of this stuff makes intuitive sense ("Okay, sure, you should put some flashing in here to keep water from getting in", or "you need to clean the walls of grease before painting or the paint won't stick"), it's not necessarily obvious especially if you have no background in the relevant skill. It pays to be proactive about educating yourself. Fortunately this is easier now than it ever has been, since there's a ton of knowledge available for free online.
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Jul 24, 2014 03:29
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Speaking of flashing. Lots of people do not understand it and think the point is just to cover something in metal or plastic. Many siding/window/door/roofing contractors, even. Not so... remember: poo poo rolls downhill. Rain goes downhill too, unless it's forced by the wind. The whole point is to channel water away from things that can rot. So basically, if you start by putting your flashing on from the bottom of the house/window/door/whatever and work your way up and around, you're already starting out pretty good. If you start the other way, you're likely to channel water into the wall, not away from it. The rest is the difference between an OK flashing job and a great one. Stuff like making sure it goes pretty far out the wall on the sheathing under the siding (I'll likely go no less than a foot in every direction when I get to that point, and I haven't even looked at building code for that stuff yet) and making sure that everywhere the flashing ends and will dump water is especially well covered by the next piece down. There are a few exceptions, like flashing installed under sills and below the edge of the sheathing to keep splashback from heavy rain from splattering up onto the sill and lower edge of the sheathing and soaking in, but they are pretty rare.
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Jul 24, 2014 03:41
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:(thanks again, Motronic!) What he said. I thought I knew a lot of DIY stuff, but you're the man, Motronic.
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Jul 24, 2014 03:48
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PuTTY riot posted:What the gently caress? Breakers are like what, $5-10 a pop (for the regular ones)? Ahahahaaa. Someone who's never had to buy Wadsworth!
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Jul 24, 2014 04:50
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Mercury Ballistic posted:Serious question from the guy who likes to DIY, but has little training, and just a moderate amount of experience. You're right, but not in relation to code. Trying to overbuild without an understanding of why things are done a particular way can certainly be risky and end up worse (the first example that comes to mind would be someone with an electronics background saying "screw these crappy wire nut electrical connections, I'm gonna solder it!"). But code is proscriptive, not prescriptive. It doesn't say "put fiberglass batts in the wall cavities", it says "put at least R-19 insulation in the wall cavities" (plus fire resistance, etc.). It puts forth a set of requirements you need to meet, and if you don't know the proper techniques, you won't be successful whether you're just trying to meet them or if you're trying to exceed them.
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Jul 24, 2014 05:13
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Speaking of the difference between hot and neutral: my old man was complaining about getting zapped when he was working on his old radios. It's a house I bought for them to live closer to me, and it needed a lot of work before we were comfortable moving them in. They installed a new breaker panel and redid a considerable amount of wiring to get in better lighting. Now, my old man has Parkinson's Disease, he's working on old tube radios with two-prong connectors, and he's working on the radios because they're broken. So I don't know what to make of it. I tried testing the ground for some of the circuits. It looks like a multimeter reports a proper short from the offending outlets to a prong clipped to some water shutoffs. Scratching off ground, he started to suspect neutral was not wired correctly. All I could have thought was that maybe the outlets were not properly wired, but the ones he was using were fine. I wondered then maybe it was something downstream in the circuit. Is there any concise way to test for anything wrong? We have linoleum floors and bare concrete in the garage. It's hard for me to imagine that despite him shuffling with the Parkinson's that he could build up supersaiyan static electricity, especially in the hotter time of the year.
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Jul 24, 2014 05:19
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Is there any concise way to test for anything wrong? Go to any hardware store, and get one of these :  http://www.galco.com/buy/Michigan-I...HgCQaAlsC8P8HAQ
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Jul 24, 2014 05:25
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If the outlets are wired corectly it could be a loose neutral upstream. I swear, if I ever rewire my entire house there will be no three wire circuits where two phases share a neutral unless it is for 220v. e: oh, and I'd pigtail all the outlets. CopperHound fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 05:35
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An old tube radio would not meet today's electrical codes. Polarized plugs were not common when tube radios were still being mass produced, so any exposed metal on the radio could potentially be hot. A "hot chassis" was a common design flaw of old radios. lazydog fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 05:49
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Hell, it was a common design FEATURE of some! In fact if you see one that has a plugin power cord that is (or was originally) clipped to the case so it gets removed automatically when you remove the case, you are working with just that, a live-chassis radio or tv set. It was very very common in 60s/70s TVs. If the power cord doesn't come off with the case, you get to guess, or measure. One guess which i suggest doing (  it involves a multimeter)
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Jul 24, 2014 07:16
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We still don't have polarized plugs in europe, I dunno it seems there are other just as effective ways to make devices safe.
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Jul 24, 2014 08:52
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His Divine Shadow posted:We still don't have polarized plugs in europe, I dunno it seems there are other just as effective ways to make devices safe. True. Many new US devices are not polarized. Most electronics these days have universal power supplies, so the only difference between a US and European model is which power cord they stick in the box. We were just speculating on reasons why Rocko's dad may have gotten shocked, and chances are it's because he's dealing with old radios that were made with little regard to safety. Rocko Bonaparte, by all means make sure the outlets are wired correctly, but I'd recommend getting your dad on a GFCI outlet. An isolation transformer might not be a bad idea either.
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Jul 24, 2014 09:39
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kid sinister posted:What he said. I thought I knew a lot of DIY stuff, but you're the man, Motronic. I appreciate that, but I'm cheating: I learned how to "DIY" in various professional settings and took the information home with me.
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Jul 24, 2014 14:20
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kastein posted:If the power cord doesn't come off with the case, you get to guess, or measure. One guess which i suggest doing ( I didn't know about the hot chasis stuff. My old man has done this at least all of my own life so I figured he might have actually learned a thing or two. He was doing electronics since he was a kid, his Army gig was with electronics, and then he was a technician working on mainframes for IBM. The fact he'd never show me anything I chalked up to selfishness, but after seeing him using a computer after what I picked up before even hitting my teens, it's possible he doesn't know some of the finer points of everything he's working with. I'd be inclined to find external power protection for him because he plugs these things in all over the house when he's playing with them. Hell, he plugs them all over the house when he's not playing with them. I think I'm overdue for an outlet tester regardless.
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Jul 24, 2014 16:05
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Motronic posted:I appreciate that, but I'm cheating: I learned how to "DIY" in various professional settings and took the information home with me. You're like the SA version of the old man hanging out at the hardware store who knows everything about everything.
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Jul 24, 2014 16:20
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His Divine Shadow posted:We still don't have polarized plugs in europe, I dunno it seems there are other just as effective ways to make devices safe. Isn't that because Europe is on 220v, where both legs are hot? In other words, there's no neutral prong to mark as different?
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Jul 24, 2014 19:43
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No. European 220v is done with a single hot leg. Edit: split phase residential power is rare in Europe; they typically use 230/400v three-phase. Zhentar fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 20:05
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:my old man was complaining about getting zapped when he was working on his old radios. Is it possible that the house wiring is fine, but he's getting nuked by the capacitors because he's not discharging them before working on the radios? You mention later that maybe he might be forgetting/have only 'limited' knowledge of what he's actually doing.
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Jul 24, 2014 20:30
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Capacitors store DC, so he should be able to tell very easily which one he's getting zapped by. They have very distinct sensations.
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Jul 24, 2014 20:35
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kastein posted:Capacitors store DC, so he should be able to tell very easily which one he's getting zapped by. They have very distinct sensations. Yeah, I've been zapped by different stuff, but I don't tell people that "I was zapped by A/C power working on that radio", I just tell them I got zapped. It was just another idea, I've seen seasoned techs forget to discharge stuff before working on it and it's a common enough mistake.
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Jul 24, 2014 21:00
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Amykinz posted:Yeah, I've been zapped by different stuff, but I don't tell people that "I was zapped by A/C power working on that radio", I just tell them I got zapped. It was just another idea, I've seen seasoned techs forget to discharge stuff before working on it and it's a common enough mistake. As someone who has accidentally electrocuted themselves on several different kinds of signal let me tell you how the refined notes of a well-aged AC shock compares to the cheap swill that is a capacitor discharge.
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Jul 25, 2014 01:54
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Does it count as "crappy construction tale" if it's neighbors being crappy about someone doing construction? http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/07/24/homeowners-association-veteran-cant-build-furniture-for-military-families-in-need/ That guy builds furniture in his garage, and donates most of it to needy Air Force families. At least one HOA busybody in the neighborhood is bothered by it. quote:“I may not paint, sand, cut wood or screw on the property at anytime,” he said.
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Jul 25, 2014 18:21
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HOAs are crappy construction tales.
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Jul 25, 2014 18:30
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My boss sold his house that was in an HOA and the new homeowners got a letter in the mail a week later saying the HOA is suing them because they didn't have the right mailbox. So now the new homeowners are suing my boss. Over a $130 mailbox. He even said he'd cut them a check for it, but they want damages.
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Jul 25, 2014 18:33
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Motronic posted:HOAs are crappy construction tales. My only solace for the modern HOA and McMansions is that when it comes time for them to do dramatic work to keep the houses from collapsing 50 years from now, all the HOAs will have a fit and prevent the necessary work.
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Jul 25, 2014 18:34
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I've got ten bucks for a kickstarter to pay the fine so he can tell the HOA to kiss his rear end and keep going. Anyone else? If someone wants to tell me what legal things I can or cannot do with my property appearance wise, they can buy it from me.
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Jul 25, 2014 18:34
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GreenNight posted:My boss sold his house that was in an HOA and the new homeowners got a letter in the mail a week later saying the HOA is suing them because they didn't have the right mailbox. So now the new homeowners are suing my boss. Over a $130 mailbox. He even said he'd cut them a check for it, but they want damages. Did he say he'd cut them a check for all the expenses/time spent from the HOA suing them? Because if so, that's pretty lovely of them. If not... I'd be pretty pissed if the sellers got me sued too.
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Jul 25, 2014 18:38
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GreenNight posted:My boss sold his house that was in an HOA and the new homeowners got a letter in the mail a week later saying the HOA is suing them because they didn't have the right mailbox. So now the new homeowners are suing my boss. Over a $130 mailbox. He even said he'd cut them a check for it, but they want damages. Sounds like they'll fit right in. Enjoy your new digs, assholes.
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Jul 25, 2014 18:40
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Rurutia posted:Did he say he'd cut them a check for all the expenses/time spent from the HOA suing them? Because if so, that's pretty lovely of them. The big thing is that my boss replaced the mailbox 5 years ago and this is the first they've heard that they weren't in compliance. Also, I think it has less to do with the mailbox and more to do with the new owners being huge assholes. Apparently they've been parking their beatup cars right on the lawn and their teenage son has been booming music from his car at 2am. So I'm guessing the neighbors called the HOA out on them.
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Jul 25, 2014 18:43
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What damages could they possibly be awarded for that?
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Jul 25, 2014 18:56
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We don't really do HOA's around here but they scare the poo poo out of me. Their existance enrages me, but of course you only hear the bad stories. It's like neighbourhoods can't be bothered to put in the work to naturally become "nice" so they try to force some insanely heavy-handed artificial ideas of what is "nice" on the community because everyone is so hosed up they can't be trusted to behave. Like there's no HOA's here at all and at the same time they aren't needed. The city has some very basic bylaws about noise and in extreme cases lawn/garden care and basic upkeep but it's just that, basic. People are free to do what ever they want for the most part, and the city will only get involved in extreme cases. Want to paint your house bright pink? Sure why not. Turn your front yard into a vegetable garden? Great, we fully support that. Long grass? Yellow grass? No grass? Who loving cares. There also isn't this insane idea that a bright pink house with unmowed grass a couple doors down somehow impacts your "property values". It almost becomes this weird superstition to people, it's like audiophiles who claim magic rocks and thousand dollar cables make the sound better. But in a lot of ways its a sort of self-fufilling myth because americans keep getting told that if a house on their block is the wrong shade of cream it will hurt their property values, so even though it doesn't bother them they worry about it and demand someone pass a rule against it just in case, to protect their property values.
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Jul 25, 2014 19:11
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canyoneer posted:Does it count as "crappy construction tale" if it's neighbors being crappy about someone doing construction? Hang on, he can't paint on his property at any time. gently caress, sucks to be him if he wants a new colour in his living room I guess. He should find the most offensive possible colour under the HOA regs and wallpaper the outside of his house with it. And, probably, get onto the local veterans' association or whatever.
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Jul 25, 2014 19:27
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GanjamonII posted:What damages could they possibly be awarded for that? Likely zero. I'm guessing that would be a hard suit to win. When I bought my house last year, I was given the huge stack of papers written in the spergiest Howard Hughes-esque detail on what was in-compliance and what was not. If they got that disclosure and didn't check for HOA compliance? Buyer's fault. Baronjutter posted:We don't really do HOA's around here but they scare the poo poo out of me. Their existance enrages me, but of course you only hear the bad stories. It's like neighbourhoods can't be bothered to put in the work to naturally become "nice" so they try to force some insanely heavy-handed artificial ideas of what is "nice" on the community because everyone is so hosed up they can't be trusted to behave. That's the funny part. The big "benefits" people crow about with the HOAs is forcing your neighbors to keep the exterior of their house in good repair, no weeds/tall grass, cars on blocks, whatever. In my city, the city already has ordinances about that and can enforce them with fines! HOAs just add work for busybodies to tattle on their neighbors. "But canyoneer, the city code enforcement are a bunch of lazy bums and never do anything!" "Not true in the boring suburb we live in, where some of the most expensive and restrictive HOAs are! That's probably true for a giant city, but that's not where we live" The "property value" thing is funny too. Spending $150/month to maintain "property value"? How about just $10/month for the community pool and insurance, because there's no way that $1700/yr in incremental HOA dues are adding or preserving that much "value". When I shopped for houses, I ended up buying a house for a larger transaction price with a $38/mo HOA (which is really low for this area) rather than a "cheaper" house with a $95/mo HOA fee. The monthly payments were cheaper (  at preserving value on that one!)My two favorite HOA stories are the zebra stripes and the parking boot. Zebra stripes story is probably apocryphal. Heard this one somewhere on the internet. An old lady repainted her house, and got a nasty letter and huge fine for painting it the wrong color (the shade was slightly off of the officially approved color, or she used an approved trim color for the base coat or whatever). She paid the fine, and corrected the house by repainting her entire house in zebra stripes using all 7 of the "approved colors" on the HOA pallet. Parking boot story definitely did happen. http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?3880087 The HOA farmed out parking enforcement to a third party, and homeowners had to display a parking permit to park on the street in front of their own houses. This guy parks outside his house every day, and one day forgets to put up his resident parking pass. His car gets booted, and he must pay $140 to the parking enforcement company to remove it. So he calls the cops, makes sure it's legal, and puts the car on dollys and rolls it into his garage. Now it's a standoff: The guy doesn't need to drive that car, and the parking company can't go into his garage to get the boots back without his permission. Legislators in AZ tried to ban HOAs from creating and enforcing parking regulations on public streets, but the compromise ended up being any new HOAs formed after 2014 cannot create/enforce parking bylaws (rather than all existing HOAs)
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Jul 25, 2014 19:28
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Baronjutter posted:but of course you only hear the bad stories. That is true. And to be fair, I have a frien with a home in an established neighborhood with an HOA. They have no rules/regulations on what you do to the homes, but since the streets aren't "dedicated" (meaning owned by the municipality) and there are common areas that need to be mowed their very reasonable HOA fees go towards road maintenance/plowing and common area mowing/maintenance. And that's all well and good. But the problem is that his house is under a title encumbrance to this HOA, and there is basically no legal supervision of them. So if you get the right group of busybodies elected to the board they can simply change the rules, jack the fees and start putting liens on people's houses. That is not an acceptable situation to be in for me. Motronic fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 25, 2014 19:36
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The HOA I'm moving into is $130/year which is basically nothing. The rules don't seem that bad either. I don't have to shovel my sidewalk, and the association keeps repairing the alleys and mowing the common areas.
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Jul 25, 2014 19:55
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